


perspective or parallax

by milkyegg_carton



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mutants, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Trini-centric (Power Rangers), X Mansion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-09-07 02:15:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20301778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkyegg_carton/pseuds/milkyegg_carton
Summary: “I’m Trini,” she says, glaring around at her peers before down casting her eyes to her lap, where her jeans have suddenly changed to a shade of pink. She fiddles her fingers, pink quickly swirling across the skin. Through gritted teeth, she says, “Sometimes I change colour."





	1. Chapter 1

Everyone gets sent to X-Mansion for a reason. Trini doesn’t think her parent’s reason is particularly justified, but it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve disagreed on a fundamental level. Learning to control her minimal powers isn’t high on Trini’s to-do list, but she agrees to go because it’ll get her away from her parents and their hushed whispering and frightened glances.

Orientation is just 4 other kids. Trini guesses they get separated by age because everyone she’s with is also going into the 11th grade. She sits slouched in a chair, her legs outstretched in front of her, not looking anyone else in the face. They sit in a circle in a posh room with an alien-looking guy called Zordon and go around introducing themselves. Only one of the kids, Billy, seems excited to be there. Trini likes him immediately.

“I’m William Cranston, but I go by Billy,” he smiles as he talks, looking around at everyone, “I’m from Wisconsin, and I can talk to computers. Or, more like they talk to me. We converse. I got to the Mansion at the beginning of the summer, so I have been waiting for the new school year to start, I’m excited to meet you guys.”

“Thank you for volunteering to go first, Billy,” Zordon says, flipping a page on his clipboard, “Who wants to go next?”

This question is met with silence.

Zordon picks the Asian boy staring out the window to go next. His name is Zack. Zack can teleport small objects, he says with a small, mischievous smile.

Next is the only other girl in the group. Her name is Kim. Trini takes one look at her and then immediately fixes her eyes on the floor, fighting a light flush coming over her face. Kim asks to pass on what her power is. Zordon refuses. She glares at him before slowly stating that she’s strong.

“Like how strong?” Zack asks, leaning forward to look closer at her.

“Strong.” Is her short reply.

Zordon calls on the blond boy, Jason. Jason also asks to pass on discussing his abilities, but it doesn’t fly. After a long silence, where Jason cracks all of his knuckles and stares at his feet, he quietly, almost so that none of them can hear, says that he talks to animals.

“Why do you look so embarrassed?” Billy asks.

“I’m not embarrassed,” Jason says quickly, defensively.

Zordon cuts the conversation short, determined to stay on track. They all look at Trini.

Heat rushes to Trini’s face. And it gives her away immediately.

“Wow,” Zack says.

“That’s fascinating,” says Billy.

Jason’s eyes widen.

Kim only slightly cocks her head.

“I’m Trini,” she says, glaring around at her peers before down casting her eyes to her lap, where her jeans have suddenly changed to a shade of pink. She fiddles her fingers, pink quickly swirling across the skin. Through gritted teeth, she says, “Sometimes I change colour."

-

Orientation takes them through the Mansion at a relaxed pace, sometimes bumping into other small groups on similar paths. They are shown where the kitchens and cafeteria are, where the majority of classes take place, the indoor gym, the outdoor gym, and finally the dormitories.

Trini walks beside Zack near the back of the group, listening to his quiet commentary on the luxurious house they are walking through. Trini welcomes the feeling of camaraderie because she also has never been in such a nice house before. As they pass through the kitchens Zack teleports two oranges across the room and hands her one. Trini smiles as she peels it.

Trini wonders how many students must live here, because there are plenty of dorm rooms but she hasn’t seen that many students yet. Maybe more students come the day before school actually starts, which is still a week away, to give the newer students time to settle in.

It is with quiet horror that Trini is told her and Kim are sharing a room. When her skin turns a bright white at the news, Zack points it out and his smirk is justification for her to punch him in the ribs. He just laughs and laughs.

-

Trini pushes herself hard to get up out of bed early the first morning in the house, quietly dressing and heading to the bathrooms, her back to Kim’s sleeping form.

When she gets to the kitchens only one other person is there.

“Good morning!” Billy says, smiling big.

Trini automatically smiles back. She grabs a banana and sits across from him. If she didn’t know better, Trini would have guessed his powers had something to do with brightening everyone else’s mood. Or brightening rooms. Something like that.

“What are you working on?” She asks, looking at the pile of mechanical scraps and pieces in front of him.

“I’m just fiddling with putting a fan together for a computer I’m working on. I need to figure out how to make it smaller without it loosing the capabilities that a bigger fan could get done easily,” he says. He holds up a fan-like object, missing one of it’s petals.

Trini nods, taking a bite out of her banana.

They sit in comfortable silence, the rising sun slowly throwing light across the cafeteria. 

“You’ve been here all summer?” Trini asks eventually.

“Yeah,” Billy says, his attention locked on sorting through some nuts and bolts.

“How did that happen?” Trini asks, “If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”

Billy looks up and smiles at her, he says, “No, thats fine. I contacted them, figured it was time I came here. I asked if I could come earlier than the start of the school year so I could familiarize myself with the equipment at the space. It takes me a long time to get used to new things, so doing it at my own pace is best for me.”

-

Each of them have a regular school day Monday to Friday and a time slot in the evening to spend one-on-one with Zordon.

Trini hates him from the start.

Zordon has her running laps around the outdoor track, something Trini sure as fuck didn’t sign up for. She grudgingly jogs as Zordon, the weird alien motherfucker he is, hovers beside her the entire time, asking her questions and jotting her answers down on a clip board.

“When did it first occur? How old were you?”

“Have you ever felt in control of it?"

“What colour appears most when you are angry?”

“When you are happy?”

“When you are under pressure?”

“Why am I running?” Trini spits out as she comes to a stop, heaving for air. “What does this have to do with anything?”

Zordon, looking up from his notes in confusion replies, as if it’s incredibly obvious, “You are out of shape. How do you expect to gain control over your physical abilities without being physically fit?”

Trini gapes at him, anger filling her, too out of breath to come up with a response to that.

“Red. You turn red when you are offended and angry,” Zordon notes out loud, turning back to his clip board to jot it down.

Trini grits her teeth and starts jogging again.

-

“A cow?” Kim said, incredulously, as Zack threw his head back in laughter, “The first animal you talked to was a cow?”

The five of them were in the boy’s room, Kim and Trini on Billy’s bed, Zack on his top bunk, his feet hanging down, and Jason and Billy on the bottom bunk. Trini had no idea where Zack had managed to find the liquor, but she couldn’t have been more thankful.

“Explain!” Kim demanded.

Trini smirked at the redness on Jason’s face, and slouched more comfortably against the wall, her feet just hanging off the end of the bed. 

Jason swirled his drink and then downed it in one go. He crunched his red solo cup as he took a deep breath, but Billy cut him off, saying, “Hey! Don’t ruin that, we only have so many!”

Jason startled, he said, “Oh, shit. Sorry.” He started to smooth the cup back out. He cleared his throat.

“We were pulling a prank. You know how cowes can only go up stairs, not down? Well, we got the cow up the stairs and then she started saying words to me, like telling me she wants to sleep and stuff, and I thought my friends—”

He hesitates. It’s brief, but they all feel it. Because theres the people Before You Know. And then theres the people After You Know. Rarely the same.

“The people I was with, I thought they were pranking me. But that stupid cow was literally talking to me, and I was so freaked out when no one else could hear her,” Jason says, shaking his head.

Trini watches Billy place his hand on Jason’s shoulder comfortingly. She sips at her drink.

“Well, did you at least pull off the prank?” Kim asks, standing and moving over to the desk with all the mixing ingredients on it.

Jason smiles at that. “Yeah,” he says, “But I got caught. I took the fall for everyone else. However, it did take them like 2 weeks to get the cow down from the second floor.”

Zack laughs, reaching down for a high five, he says, “Nice!”

Trini looks over at Kim pouring soda into her cup, eyes trailing down her arms to her hands. Her eyes flick back up to Kim’s face and when they meet eyes, Kim smiles a small smile in her direction.

“Looking a little florescent there, Crazy Girl,” Zack says, smirking down at her.

She immediately glares at him, her face heating up, and she raises an embarrassingly pink hand to flip him off. She hides her face in her cup, as he laughs at her.

“Zack, do you still need your laptop camera fixed?” Billy asks, effectively changing the atmosphere on a dime. The boys launch into a discussion about their electronics, and if Billy can fix this and that.

Kim comes back over to the bed. She sits beside Trini, closer than before, their arms pressed together.

Trini burns bright pink all night.


	2. Chapter 2

In the week leading up to the start of school, the week after orientation, the Mansion starts to fill up. Trini looks at the new people also up early for breakfast as she sits across from Billy one morning. They sit in clumps around the cafeteria, already in friend groups, chatting quietly and eating breakfast. Trini looks until she makes eye contact with a boy sporting green scales on his face and arms, and then turns quickly back to face Billy.

Billy doesn’t seem to have noticed any of the new company. He types slowly into an old laptop with one hand, the other holding a spoonful of oatmeal over a bowl that’s gone cold. 

“What are you working on?” Trini asks.

“I’m recoding the software on this computer,” Billy says, lowering the spoon, “I can’t hear what it’s trying to tell me, so I’m writing off some programs it doesn’t use anymore, like reading a floppy disk. It might make its speech clearer.”

Trini nods, wondering, not for the first time, what it must be like to hear technology talk to you.

For Trini, getting up early has gone from a tactic for avoiding Kimberly to a routine for having breakfast with Billy. She enjoys his straightforwardness and his positive energy. The transition from home life to Mansion life has been supplemented by Billy’s calming, sure presence.

Trini grabs her empty cereal bowl and Billy’s cold oatmeal and heads to the kitchen area.

She drops her bowl in a dirty dishes bin and boils the kettle for more hot water. She leans against the counter as it heats and looks out through the window in the wall dividing the cafeteria and the kitchens. 

Trini starts when she meets the eyes of a group of other students who all look down when she meets their eyes. She spins around, biting the inside of her cheek when she realizes that she’s turning pink.

The kettle boils and she pours more water into Billy’s oatmeal and then walks back to their table, her head down the entire time, feeling eyes on her. Trini doesn’t look up at Billy as she places his oatmeal down in front of him. She doesn’t notice the closed laptop and his eyes on her.

“You’re pink,” Billy states, plain as day.

Trini glares at the table, not meeting his eyes, “Yeah.”

He starts eating the oatmeal again, saying quietly, “Why did you turn pink?”

“Because people were looking at me.”

“Oh.”

They lapse into silence.

—

Trini’s half hour time slot with Zordon that evening is filled with more laps. Her permanent anger towards the alien has her tinged red every time they meet, and it seems to have warded off his constant questions. Instead, he asks her only one question every time she does another lap.

This only makes her laps slower.

The weather is hot, the sun going down casting shadows of trees across the track. A breeze blows, foreshadowing the fall, and Trini wonders what winter will be like at the Mansion. If she’ll go home for Christmas or not.

Near the end of their session, Zack appears.

Trini eyes him suspiciously as she finishes the last lap. He shoots her a devilish grin in return.

Zordon nods down at his clip board as Trini starts stretching her legs, a routine she’s fell quickly into after all of these running sessions. When Zordon looks up from his notes he says, “I am pairing the two of you together for weight training.”

Trini looks at Zack in confusion, saying, “Wait, what?”

“Trini you will continue meeting with me at 7 everyday and it will be followed by weight training. Zack we will meet at 8 as usual, the weights will warm you up for our sessions,” Zordon said, looking between the two of them.

“Sounds great,” Zack said, his eyes unmoving from Trini. She was sure she must be turning a bright red right now.

“Questions?” Zordon asked, with a tone of finality, looking over at Trini directly this time.

Trini swallowed the sudden lump in her throat, muttering, “I don’t know how to lift weights.”

“I know how,” Zack quickly maintained, “I’ll show you.”

Without another word, Zordon floated away, nodding and looking back down at his notes.

Trini squinted at his retreating form, utter annoyance lifting off of her like steam, like a cartoon character whose’s temper fills them up in red rage. She took a deep breath. She looked at Zack. His devilish grin was steady.

“You’re purple right now,” Zack said, “What does that mean?”

—

The Mansion has numerous gyms. Weights are in the basement beside the swimming pool and the sauna, which Trini eyes as she passes, unaware that such a sanctuary existed on campus.

Weight lifting goes surprisingly well. Trini is quietly thankful for Zack’s directions, which he gives with ease and a smile, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He only boasts about how much more he can lift than her once, but asks her “Bro, do you even lift?” more times than she can count.

When it draws close to 8 o’clock, Zack’s slotted time with Zordon, Trini wipes down her weights and leaves Zack as he wipes down the machine he was using. She showers, taking her time to stand in the hot water. The privacy of her shower stall a blessing.

Trini thinks back to the last time she was truly alone, supposing it must have been the bus ride to the Mansion over a week ago. Jason had been on the same bus, but they sat rows apart.

When she turns the water off she stands in the stall for another minute, and then towels dry and walks to the locker with her things. Trini slides into sweats and an old yellow T-shirt. She wonders if Kim will be in the room when she gets in. She groans at the thought of another night ignoring someone she’s forced to live within 5 metres of.

Trini wonders lightly if Zordon has paired Kim up with Jason for weight training. Must’ve been Jason, Billy doesn’t do any of the training the rest of them do.

When Trini leaves the girls changes room, the last thing she expects is Zack waiting for her. Her first reaction is to scowl, feeling very done with his high energy presence after such a long night of physical exercise.

“Aren’t you meeting with Gordon?” Trini asks, as she walks past him.

Zack keeps pace with her easily, saying, “I am,” then, in a rush, “I just wanted to ask when you eat breakfast?”

This causes Trini to stop. She turns to face him, searching his face. “Why?” She asks, feeling entirely caught off guard.

Zack’s shoulders shoot up shyly, he hesitates. He explains, “It’s just I never see you at breakfast? Sometimes I see you at dinner but like then you eat in your room I think? I just thought we could like, sit together maybe, cause like we’re paired up now, ya know?”

It’s satisfaction that Trini feels watching his cheeks redden. Seeing someone else’s emotions on display across their skin sometimes makes her smug.

Trini smiles a small smile, tilting her head. “I get up around 6 and eat with Billy every morning. It’s quieter at that time, Billy can’t be around a lot of noise.” And I don’t like crowds of people, she doesn’t say.

Zack nods. His devilish grin sliding back into place, he says, “See you then, Crazy Girl.”

Then he’s off, running to wherever he meets Zordon for their training session.

Trini sighs, standing still in place, hoping she didn’t just sign herself up to ruin her and Billy’s morning routine.

—

Kim isn’t in the room when she gets back, but she’s almost too tired to care. Trini throws her gym bag on the floor by her bed, digging her phone out of her pocket to set alarms for the morning. She wonders if Zack will actually be awake for 6am, then rolls over and sleeps.

(She doesn’t wake when Kim enters their room three hours later.)

—

To his credit, Zack beats Trini to the cafeteria for breakfast. He sits in her usual spot across from Billy and looks to be talking quietly with the other boy, who has his hands deep inside a tube computer monitor. Trini observes them from a distance as she pours herself cereal.

When Trini approaches the table and Zack sees her, he smirks. Does he ever just smile? He slides over so she can sit across from Billy.

Billy greets her and his shoulders seem to relax as she sinks into her usual spot. He focuses back on something inside the monitor.

“Morning,” Zack says, nudging her elbow.

Trini starts eating her cereal, turning her head to meet his eyes as she slowly chews, considering him and his presence. “Morning,” she says back, not returning his smile.

They lapse into silence.

Trini eyes the two empty banana peals and two empty coffee mugs in front of Zack. The boy seems to have less energy this early in the day, but he bounces his left leg up and down consistently, the fabric of his jeans rubbing against Trini’s own pair every now and then. The silence stretches and becomes awkward.

At least awkward for Trini. She’s pretty sure Billy has never felt shy or awkward in the entire time she’s known him, their usual breakfast routine consisting of mild conversation and mostly silence. Trini feels dread at the realization that she should have asked Billy before inviting Zack to breakfast. Routine is the oil in the machine that is Billy. And she’s gone and thrown Zack into the mix.

Zack, who is now smirking at her again.

She resists the urge to roll her eyes. “What?” She says, her eyes narrowing.

“So,” he says, looking between her and Billy, “Whats it like rooming with Kim?”

Billy lifts his head at the question, the genuine curiosity in his eyes juxtaposing the mischievous glint in Zack’s.

Heat floods Trini’s face. She stands and stiffly walks with her cereal bowl back to the kitchen, hiding from view as her and her clothing all turn pink, leaving Zack laughing and laughing at the table. She drops her bowl and spoon in the dirty dish bin and stands still for a minute, breathing deeply.

She only moves when a couple other students arrive in the kitchen, stepping out of their way.

Trini moves again to find a mug in the cabinets that she’s never opened before. She doesn’t dislike Zack, he’s incredibly irritating but he’s decided they’re friends. And thats an attitude Trini can get behind. Having friends heading into the first week of school seems like a safe plan. 

She grabs a yellow mug and pours coffee into it, adding two spoonfuls of sugar. Her hands are back to their regular colour as she steps back into the cafeteria.

Billy has the computer monitor off the table and on the bench beside him when she sits back down. In front of him now is a printed piece of paper, with a grid on it.

Trini doesn’t look in Zack’s direction, instead meeting Billy’s eyes. He smiles at her.

“I have an idea,” Billy says, reasonably.

**Author's Note:**

> Cool cool cool, so.
> 
> I'm working without a particular structure here, these spinnets, bits, odds, and ends of story won't be in order. This is generally a beginning. I'm just having fun.
> 
> If you've got an idea that would fit in this universe, um, please tell me! Please. Prompts will keep me writing.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at milky-crate


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